The present invention relates to receiving and displaying a short message service (SMS) message on a user equipment device, such as a set-top box of a user media equipment.
Short message service (SMS), also known as text messaging, refers to a protocol for sending and receiving short messages (SMS can also refer to the messages themselves) between mobile devices. Many mobile phones and personal data assistants (PDA) include SMS as a standard feature and, as a result, messaging via SMS is widely used by the users of such devices. An advantage of SMS is that SMS messages can be quickly composed and sent to a desired recipient. Notification and display of the message on the recipient's mobile device usually occurs immediately upon receipt of the SMS.
Despite these and other useful features, the SMS protocol has not been fully implemented on certain other devices, particularly less- or non-mobile devices that are not normally considered to be platforms for sending, receiving or displaying SMS messages. Furthermore, such devices, unlike mobile phones, may not be configured to serve as dedicated communication devices, and thus systems and methods for controlling the notification and display of SMS messages on such devices do not exist.